Re: ANN: Ada bindings to PLplot plotting software

[Jerry <lanceboyle@qwest.net>]

On Jan 2, 5:34 pm, Georg Bauhaus <see.reply...@maps.futureapps.de>
wrote:
> Jerry wrote:
> > This is to announce the official availability of the Ada language
> > bindings to the plotting package PLplot as of version 5.9.1. See the
> > home page athttp://plplot.sourceforge.net/. Available unofficially
> > for some time, the Ada bindings are now enabled by default.
>  [...]
> > The Ada bindings offer a number of substantial improvements over the C
> > API, including a choice of binding, one using "traditional" PLplot
> > names such as plcol0(1) to set the pen color to red, the other using
> > "Ada-friendly" names such as Set_Color(Red).

Thanks for your comments, Georg.

> However, authors of some bindings including this Ada
> one have added "a number of substantial improvements over
> the C API". (Set_Color(Red) seems so much better than plcol0(1),
> even when it does not name the thing that is turned red;
> I don't want to sound complaining, in particular having
> done nothing on this work).  That's somewhat hidden
> from the web presentation, though, I think.

Read the docs 8^). I originally called this procedure Set_Pen_Color
(..) but changed it when I figured that not everyone appreciates the
reference to pen plotters and would respond, "What pen?" Calling this
proc simply causes everything that is drawn thereafter to be in the
specified color, until the proc is called again with a different
argument.

> Can I put an item on the Plplot binding wish list?
> That would be: show some examples that use the thick
> bindings, on the web pages.  Maybe these examples using
> thick bindings will then help some demonstrate why they are
> using a language that offers more than Fortran 77 style C.

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I developed the "Ada-name"
binding first and made the "traditional-name" later at the request of
the PLplot developer team.

I'm very happy to report that I took your petition to the developers
and you should soon see Ada examples written with both bindings
appearing on the PLplot web site with the "Ada-name" versions given
preference if possible. I'll post back here when that upgrade happens.

> I'm still looking for an alternative for some Perl-driven
> GNUplot command scripts, so I'm really happy to see PLplot
> growing into the post-70s era ;-)

We try hard. 8^)